Occurrence of fish species in the inland water of Murmansk Region (Russia): research in 1972-2021

Abstract

Knowledge about the distribution of living organisms on the Earth is quite important for many branches of the biological sciences and for the deeper understanding of the surrounding world. However, much of the existing distributional data are scattered throughout a multitude of sources, such as taxonomic publications, checklists and natural history collections and often, bringing them together is difficult. Development of the digital storage facilities may prevent loss of important data (Ruchin et al. 2020). Project GBIF is a good example of a successful data storage facility, which allows investigators to publish biodiversity data in one safe place in one uniform format. Our data set describes degree of the investigation of the fish fauna of the inland water of the Murmansk region. Murmansk region is a Euro-Arctic region with heterogeneous landscape, which determines diversity of the habitats for the fish occurrence. Our data set contains valid information about distribution of the fish’s species. This data set was built upon information obtained by the members of a Laboratory of the aquatic ecosystems of Institute of North Industrial Ecology Problems of Kola Science Center of the Russian Academy of Science (INEP KSC RAS). Data set includes 18,509 records about 16 fish’s species from 14 genera (8 families) collected from 1972 to 2021. Total of 67 waterbodies from 15 different basins (rivers from basins of the White and Barents seas) was screened in order to characterize ichthyocenoses. The main purpose of publishing a database is to make our data available in the global biodiversity system to a wide range of users. The data can be used by researchers, as well as helping the authorities to manage their territory more efficiently.All occurrences are published in GBIF for the first time. We would like to make this data available to everyone by adding it in the global biodiversity database (GBIF).